Mr. Tom Gilligan:

The website, vacanthomes.ie, was initially set up as part of Mayo County Council's response to Rebuilding Ireland and now forms part of our response to Housing for All. It is set up to deal with all aspects of vacancy and dereliction. It works on the basis of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is based on asking multiples of people to help you to solve a problem, particularly using the Internet. It is a national website. It is run by Mayo County Council on behalf of the local government sector. When people log into the website, they are presented with a number of questions. These include questions on the type of property, such as whether it is detached or a bungalow. They are asked to identify the condition of the building including the condition of the roof and whether there are broken windows. They are also asked whether there are any visible signs of activity around the house. Another key thing is that people are asked to indicate how long the property has been vacant. Once they fill in those submissions, an alert notifies the vacant homes officer of the local authority that a property has been logged. It is then up to the vacant homes officer in each local authority to investigate such properties. At this stage, thousands of people have logged properties on vacanthomes.ie. I thank the public for their engagement in this regard. It is not just members of the public. Property owners have come on board to tell us that they have vacant properties and want to know what to do with them. It is up to the vacant homes officer to get in contact with those individuals and to try to bring the vacant property back into use.

With regard to the repair and lease scheme, as I have said already, it is a very important tool. I certainly welcome the increase from €40,000 to €60,000. We are actively promoting the scheme here in Mayo. One of the things that many people do not realise is that you can get multiple units out of a single dwelling.